Benefits and the Labour Supply of Women Married to Unemployed Men.

This paper seeks to explain the low labor force participation rates of women married to unemployed men in the reducing the net increment to household income that would result from the wife's employment. Simple probit models of the participation and part-time/full-time decisions are estimated using a large cross-sectional data set. The results confirm the importance of severe disincentive effects, controlling for labor market conditions. Income-related benefits are found to create worse problems than national insurance benefits; both types impede part-time work in particular. Copyright 1990 by Royal Economic Society.